Word of Honour
by Lady Razorsharp
Summary: In which Holmes proves that chivalry is not dead...RathboneBruce era one shot.


AN: This is inspired by the Universal production of _The Woman in Green_, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Word of Honour

By The Lady Razorsharp

_How sweet are looks that ladies bend  
On whom their favours fall!  
From them I battle till the end,  
To save from shame and thrall…_

--Tennyson, 'Sir Galahad'

"Three women murdered," Watson muttered darkly, tossing the newspaper on the desk. "It's unspeakable, Holmes."

Holmes, who had been thinking of nothing else since the story of the first murder broke across the pages of the Times, nodded grimly. "You know I'm not given to superfluous adjectives, Watson, but while murder is reprehensible, the slaying of an innocent woman is a heinous act indeed." The great detective rose from his chair and moved to the hearth to fill his pipe from the Persian slipper full of shag tobacco.

The familiar gesture was not lost on Watson. "A real three-pipe problem, eh, old fellow?"

"Yes," Holmes agreed. He lit a spill from the fire blazing merrily in the grate, and then touched the flaming bit of paper to the tobacco. As the musty-sweet smoke filled the air, Holmes puffed on the pipe several times to ensure a clean draw. "Three pipes for three innocent lives." He tossed the spill into the grate. "And perhaps at the end, justice."

"I don't know which is worse—the fact that those poor women are dead, or that their killer couldn't even leave them in peace," Watson added, settling himself into his favorite chair opposite Holmes. "The doctor's normally cheerful features twisted into a scowl. "It wasn't enough for him to take their lives. What kind of a depraved creature takes a part of their victim with them?" He shot a glare at the detective. "Answer me that, Holmes! What kind of a monster--?"

"Dear fellow," Holmes broke in, his voice a warm baritone rumble. "Womankind has in you a stalwart champion. There is indeed a monster loose in London tonight, but I am sure that Scotland Yard has its very best on the case."

Watson snorted. "You've always said Lestrade couldn't investigate his way out of a paper bag. What makes you so sure he'll catch this fiend?"

"For once, Scotland Yard and I seem to be in agreement," said Holmes, with just a hint of amusement in his tone. "Gregson is handling this case while our friend Lestrade is taking a much-deserved holiday. The last I heard, Lestrade was on his way to cast his line in a remote Scottish river."

"Well then, that just proves it—a fine thing to take a holiday, with all of London in a panic," Watson commented sourly.

With the pipe in his right hand and the left in the pocket of his dressing gown, Holmes crossed to the desk to stare at the grim headline. When he spoke, all traces of teasing were utterly gone. "I've always said Gregson was the exception to the rule over at the Yard. For the sake of the female populace of London, I hope he'll not prove me false."

"And I hope you're right," Watson added, as Holmes brought the paper back to the easy chair before the fire. "Lestrade fishing…if his luck is as good as it is at home, he'll have a frightfully dull trip," the doctor muttered under his breath, picking up the novel he had been reading earlier.

An hour later, the novel slipped from Watson's fingers to thump unceremoniously on the floor. The noise jarred Holmes from his smoky reverie, and he studied his fellow lodger for a few moments. It seemed they had been friends for a lifetime; true, Watson's guileless face had a few more lines on it and his sleekly combed hair was more silver than sand-colored now, but Holmes knew that a glance in the mirror would reveal similar changes in his own lean countenance. _Memento homo, quia pulvis est, et in pulverem reverteris_, the words chimed softly in Holmes' mind. _Remember, O man, dust you are and to dust you shall return._

Watson's only contribution to these darkling musings was a gentle snore, his silver head tipped forward to rest on his chest. Holmes smiled gently at his friend and went to lay a hand on Watson's shoulder.

"Watson." Holmes shook the doctor slightly. "Watson, wake up."

"Eh?" Watson blinked in the firelight. "What's the matter, old fellow? Trouble? I'll get my revolver—"

The detective chuckled. "Go to bed, Watson. I'll call you if there's trouble."

"Right, right." Watson hauled himself up out of the easy chair. "Good night, Holmes."

"Good night, Watson."

After the bedroom door shut behind his friend, Holmes restlessly snatched up the newspaper and seated himself at the desk to pore over the headline once again. With the stem of his pipe still between his teeth, Holmes leaned his cheekbone against the heel of his hand and let his mind fill with the details of the grisly crimes.

_The first murder: A young woman was found lying dead in an alleyway, identified as a ticket taker at a local cinema by her uniform—a double-breasted red velvet jacket trimmed in gold braid. Cause of death: strangulation by a length of rough woolen cloth, confirmed by the large bruise round the victim's neck and fibers lifted from her uniform jacket. The only other injury of note was that the victim's right forefinger was removed cleanly at the second knuckle._

_The second murder: A night school student on her way to meet classmates at a café never arrived at her destination. A massive search found the young woman's body under a pile of brush in the park; an autopsy revealed that her larynx was crushed, her throat marked indelibly on either side with five livid purple welts. The only other remarkable injury was a clean severing of the right forefinger at the second knuckle._

_The third murder: A nineteen-year-old automat waitress stepped out for a cigarette and never returned to finish her shift. It was speculated that the young woman simply deserted her job—she had told her friends she was unhappy with the position—but the discovery of her body in an abandoned building turned insubordination into murder. A puncture wound on the side of her neck and a single goose feather lying nearby led the Yard to believe she was drugged, and then smothered. The victim's right forefinger was cleanly severed at the second knuckle._

Sitting perfectly still save for the slow roll of his shoulders with each inhale and exhale and the occasional flicker of his eyelids, Holmes rifled through his mental filing cabinet for any possible connections between the murders and a litany of other injustices. Scores of the crimes were against women, many were serial murders, and still more featured a ritualistic mutilation of the victims, but he could recall none that boasted all three items in conjunction. He frowned, his high brow furrowing in concentration, but once more he came up empty.

The clock downstairs chimed midnight, and Holmes straightened from where he had been hunched over the desk. A mighty yawn welled up inside of him, but he squelched it and rose to knock out his pipe in the grate. He thought briefly about making good his notion of a 'three-pipe problem,' but he decided against it and replaced his pipe on its stand on the mantel. For some reason, the smoke was doing little to sharpen his senses tonight.

Well, there was always—

_No._ He ground his teeth, loathing for his former habit settling on him like an icy mantle. That door was shut, and forevermore would be. To once again touch the flame to the too-bright candle and then suffer through the enveloping darkness when the candle guttered out—no, he would not do it. For Watson's sake, he would not do it.

And yet, the memory of days and nights spent in crystalline perfection tugged at him—gently at first, then more insistent as the seconds ticked by. Resisting the urge to glance back at Watson's door to make sure the doctor was still asleep, Holmes looked at the desk he had just vacated—or, rather, the long, flat locked drawer underneath the desktop.

He needed clarity, he told himself, to banish the fatigue and extend his mind to its farthest reaches. His eyes fluttered shut for just a moment.

_Three mutilated right hands raised in supplication_—

He felt his hand going into his dressing gown pocket for the key, saw his long fingers put the key in the lock. He felt the familiar jolt of anticipation as the tumblers clicked into place. With only the barest moment's hesitation, he pulled open the drawer to reveal the old morocco case lying next to the woman's photograph.

The case was in his hand when three loud knocks sounded on the door to the sitting room.

Glancing up, Holmes thrust the case back into the desk drawer and slammed the drawer shut. Pocketing the key, he crossed the room with long strides and pulled the door open to reveal a grim-faced Inspector Gregson.

"Good evening, Inspector," said Holmes evenly. "What brings you out so late?"

By the hangdog look of him, Gregson had wrestled mightily with coming to Baker Street. London was becoming sharply critical of the Yard's failure to capture the serial murderer, and now Gregson seemed to be the latest in a line of plaintiffs at the highest court of appeal in matters of sensational crime. He stepped into the room, but made no move to divest himself of his overcoat and hat.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Holmes, but—could you come down to the morgue straightaway? I've got something I'd like you to take a look at."

"Of course, Inspector." The fatigue drained away as Holmes exchanged his dressing gown for the tweed coat hanging on the rack. "What's happened?"

"A young woman's been murdered. Poor thing was stabbed clean through the ribs, right on her front doorstep—even after a constable had seen her home." The Inspector's voice was leaden. "You'd never believe so much blood could come from a little slip of a girl like that." Gregson's gaze lowered to the Persian rug, and Holmes knew the Inspector was seeing the dreadful pool of scarlet once again. "And that's not even the worst of it," Gregson added.

Halfway into his coat, Holmes glanced back at the Inspector. "Oh?"

"The girl's right forefinger was cut off—just like those other women."

Holmes froze for a moment, his long fingers still in the act of buttoning his coat. As his expression sharpened into that of a greyhound on the scent, he snatched his hat from the rack. "Then we've not a moment to lose, Inspector." He pulled open the door and let Gregson go ahead of him, then shut the door behind them.

There was nothing about Sherlock Holmes that could be called 'squeamish'; nevertheless, Scotland Yard morgue was never a place he cared to visit. Water dripped from the ceiling to bead off the wool of his coat, and he kept his collar up against the moist, chill air. Four pitiful hillocks draped in white cloth were lined up all in a row, and he snapped back the corner of the sheet covering the nearest—and newest—victim.

"This makes four, Inspector," Holmes said tersely. "Four defenseless women murdered in the heart of London."

"And every one with the right forefinger hacked off," Gregson put in, as if to remind himself of the full horror of the crime.

Holmes peeled back the sheet even further to reveal the digit in question. "Not hacked," he corrected the Inspector. "As you can see, the finger was expertly severed—the work of a skilled surgeon." He pulled the sheet back up underneath the girl's chin. "That's our only clue."

Gregson's eyes were locked on the pallid, pretty features. "She's not much beyond the age of my sister's girl," he breathed. Finally, he tore his gaze away from the girl's face to turn a pleading look on the detective. "Is there no way of stopping this, Mr. Holmes?"

Holmes studied the girl, who lay before him like a statue carved from finest alabaster. "Yes," he replied, his baritone voice deep and flat. "There's a way…somehow." His brows drew together over eyes that glinted steel-grey in the low light. "The fiend that did this…"

The rational part of his mind obliged him with visions of what would happen to the girl's body as nature reclaimed her, but for now he did his best to engrave on his memory the curve of her chin, the soft bow of her snowy lips, the long, dark lashes fanned on her waxen cheeks. Only hours before, he reminded himself, this bundle of flesh and bone had been a living, breathing girl, poised on the cusp of womanhood. She who might have been someone's sweetheart, sister, friend or flatmate—would now sleep beneath the soil of the homeland that had failed to protect her.

_Memento, homo, quia pulvis est…_

Holmes reached out and gently brushed his thumb against the curve of the girl's smooth, cool forehead.

"I promise," he murmured. "I promise."

--End--


End file.
